Dozens of Women Drawn to Monongahela Firearms Instruction Event

MONONGAHELA – A group of almost 40 local women rang­ing in age from ear­ly 20s to late 80s gath­ered Sat­ur­day at Val­ley Inn Sports­man Asso­ci­a­tion in Monon­ga­hela to learn gun safe­ty and to prac­tice shoot­ing firearms.

Wendy Karem shoots an AR-15 rifle with the help of instruc­tor Chuck Augen­stein.

Mor­gan Cushey/For the Observ­er-Reporter

This Nation­al Rifle Asso­ci­a­tion “Women on Tar­get” event was fund­ed by Val­ley Inn Sports­man Asso­ci­a­tion and Friends of the NRA at no cost to the par­tic­i­pants. This event was designed by the NRA to teach women who nev­er used a firearm prop­er tech­niques. Two shoot­ing sta­tions, one for rifles and one for hand­guns, were set up, where women were offered instruc­tion on .22-cal­iber rifles and pis­tols as well as 9mm and .38 cal­iber-hand­guns.

Once they became pro­fi­cient on the oth­er firearms, the women were giv­en instruc­tion on shoot­ing AR-15 rifles. The par­tic­i­pants were encour­aged to bring their own firearms for instruc­tion on how to oper­ate their per­son­al firearms .

Rusty Polono­li, club pres­i­dent, said they want­ed to offer this event to women who nev­er used a firearm and may be intim­i­dat­ed by them.